"Good News" for Subsidized Student Meals in Marion

Because of recent U.S.D.A. government subsidized meal guidelines, many students will receive double the amount of fruits and vegetables at lunchtime.

That means the increasing amount of students in both Marion school districts will recieve healthier lunch options.

According to a Huffington Post op-ed by Nancy Huehnergarth, executive director of New York State Healthy Eating, the revision will do much more than that: 

• Increasing variety of vegetables served to include dark greens, red/orange and legumes

• Increasing offerings of whole grain-rich foods -- half the grains must be whole grain-rich by July and all must be whole grain-rich by start of the school year in 2014

Huehnergarth calls the change "a huge improvement," but she is not the only one psyched about the change.

New York Times food and food advocacy writer, Mark Bittman (full disclosure, 50 percent of the recipies I cook come from him), wrote that this was a big step in the right direction.

"Yes, the Obama Administration has disappointed many of its enthusiastic supporters by reneging on campaign promises, a number of them food-related," he wrote. "But these particular changes deserve praise."

However, he did note a troubling disappointment in the new guidelines.

According to Bittmen, the original recommendations made by the Institute of Medicine to the U.S.D.A., recommended limiting the amount of starchy vegetables like potatoes to one cup a week. Right now that amount is unlimited, and will remain so under the new guidelines.

Why?

"Lobbyists for the potato industry made a fuss and the Senate stepped in to make sure that didn’t happen, and that concession is integrated into the new rules: Potatoes will still be unlimited. Similarly, you might remember that Congress and industry worked together to make sure that the tomato paste on pizza would continue to qualify it as a vegetable," he wrote.

Corporate influence aside, Bittman said this is a time for food advocates and parents to rejoice.

Stay tuned for more on nutrition and obesity in the and school districts next week.